


A Language of Apology

by crowforapet



Series: (Re)Finding Our Way [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Communication, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Lack of Communication, Lena Luthor-centric, Oops this grew a plot, Samantha "Sam" Arias & Lena Luthor Friendship, Someone has a thing for Lena's lipstick, SuperCorp, Tropes, because I love Sam, chapters are all different lengths, no beta we die like Lena's morality this season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23045869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowforapet/pseuds/crowforapet
Summary: Lena hasn't spoken to Kara since she learned Supergirl's true identity, despite her friend's best efforts. How many different ways can Kara say sorry before something gives? Meanwhile, Lena grapples with feelings that may or may not go beyond friendship...Five times Kara apologizes to Lena and the one time Lena apologizes. Season 5 fix-it, kinda.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Series: (Re)Finding Our Way [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656208
Comments: 19
Kudos: 245





	1. The first time

**Author's Note:**

> Written, of course, for my friend who pestered me into posting this.
> 
> I started this just as S5 was coming out, so it's pretty much AU from S4 finale. Just assume Lena has been acting a lot less villainy than canon.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, but Lena never managed to avoid Kara entirely. In fact, she could swear she encountered _Supergirl_ more in the past month than in the past year, as if the Kryptonian was making up for Lena’s absence at game nights and coffee dates by manufacturing alien emergencies left and right. As if by somehow convincing Lena that Supergirl was necessary to the wellbeing of the planet that she would miraculously come around to her point of view and would forgive her.

The stupidity of that scheme was, quite frankly, insulting. All it did was remind Lena that behind the ridiculous costume – she didn’t even wear a _mask_ ; how did she not see it before! – was someone she would never trust again.

The first time Kara had apologized to her, Lena had still been in shock-mode, stunned by her discovery about someone she’d _thought_ had been a friend. She’d been too busy with the dissolution of the world she’d thought she’d had, her trust and goodwill plummeting into a sinkhole, trying not to let herself collapse along with it, to even think about being angry.

It had been too early for fury, but that didn’t mean Lena was a willing listener. Her ear drums absorbed nothing of the words Kara was saying, her sobs morphing her monologue into a pathetic display of crocodile tears and guilt.

“You have to believe me, Lena,” she’d said, “I _never_ meant to hurt you. I didn’t do this because I didn’t trust you, it wasn’t that, I promise! I should have told you sooner and I should never have let it get to this point. I was just… I was afraid, okay? I let my… what I felt get in the way of reason, just like Alex always says I do, and I never wanted to….”

Kara’s begging had finally started to fade in intensity, hopefully disheartened by Lena’s pointed lack of response. She hitched a sob before clearing her throat once and inhaling.

Lena couldn’t look at her. She’d been glaring holes into the pristine white of her office wall since this… conversation began. She wished she could just as easily take away her hearing, mute Kara’s voice, delete this room from existence, blast her goddamn traitorous heart into outer space. Maybe she should have delved more into auditory technology so she wouldn’t have to hear Supergirl _weeping_ , instead of wasting all that time on alien detection. Lena never wanted to even hear about another extraterrestrial again.

Kara must have regathered her courage, if you could call what a coward and a liar had _courage_ , because she had started speaking again. Lena winced.

“I didn’t want to lose what we had, as friends. And… and I’m sorry. I want to help you understand why I didn’t tell you. But I… I understand if you… if you hate me, if you never want to see me again, if –“

She’d heard enough. “I don’t,” Lena bit out, letting those two words carry all the rage that had been gathering in her chest where her friendship with Kara used to be.

That caught Kara off guard. Good. “You,” she stammered weakly, and Lena detested the hope she heard there, “you, what?”

“I _don’t_ want to see you again,” Lena clarified, spinning her head to meet Kara’s gaze, “I haven’t made up my mind about that first part, but I don’t _ever_ want to see you again.”

Until now, Lena had never seen somebody’s heart break. She’d never stared them in their tear-glistening blue eyes and watched as _her words_ carved ridges into someone’s face. She’d never seen their red-painted lips crumple and tremble while they struggled to maintain composure, or the way their posture deflated instantly like they’d forgotten how to stand. Never heard the wet gasp of disbelief as words finally failed the journalist, the super-powered figure of inspiration. She’d never been the cause of the tears that were now flowing thicker than a flash flood across the face of someone who’d used to be her friend, the sheen of saline making Kara’s cheeks shimmer in the floor-to-ceiling light of an encroaching golden hour. This grief, this pain, it was beautiful and ugly to Lena’s eyes. But-

She’d never seen Kara so devastated before; it was nothing she’d ever wanted.

And, right now, it was everything she needed.

“Get out,” Lena told her, fervently hoping that the remains of her anger could support her next words. She was seconds from falling apart and she knew it. It was all she could do to keep her voice even against the onslaught of sobs she knew were about to wrack through her. This was a dream, a nightmare. She was floating, sinking, and none of this was real. Her actions weren’t her own. She was being guided by something else; Lena was far away from here.

And yet, it was entirely _her_. Lena took a breath, scarcely recognizing the words that were forced from her lips. “If you don’t want me to change my mind about hating you, then I suggest you leave _now_. You and me, we’re _done_. Don’t bother contacting me, personally or professionally. We are not colleagues. We are _not_ friends.”

Somewhere amidst that haze of emotion, Kara had left. And that had been it, really.

Or it would have been, if not a day later she hadn’t come colliding through the lobby of L-Corp in a navy and scarlet blur, narrowly avoiding Lena and her second coffee of the morning as she pummelled a villain-of-the-week type into the very expensive, very European tile floor. The DEO had flooded in moments later, once the man had been incapacitated. Supergirl had only then glanced up at her spectators, who awash with shock (from the violence, from the property damage, who could say?), flicked her bangs out of her eyes with a swish of the hand and grinned.

“Sorry about that.”

She may not have met Lena’s eyes, but she was pointing her head in her exact direction, so.

“For fuck’s sake,” Lena had muttered.

And that was just the _start_. (There were five more encounters the next week, and Lena had been almost kidnapped twice. The DEO claimed there was an alien scientist behind it, one who loathed what the Luthors stood for. She was supposed to be on high alert. Bull _shit_.)


	2. Say it with sushi

The attacks on her person had certainly escalated. Just as Alex said they would, Lena thought bitterly. She had laughed in the face of the DEO director when she’d suggested Lena hire extra security, because there’d already been a number of mysterious deaths of people close to her family. Old sponsors, her parents’ dinner party favourites, and, most absurdly, Lex’s chemistry teacher from high school. It had seemed like overkill – none of the murdered had been friends of Lena – but more than that, she wanted to prove Alex wrong. It was entirely spiteful.

However, Lena wasn’t stupid. She might have felt like the most useless thing on the planet when she’d realized that Supergirl had been right in front of her nose the whole time, with just some plastic frames and a thrifted wardrobe as camouflage, but once she’d got past those first few, terribly shameful, months she’d remembered that Lena Luthor wasn’t anything to scoff at.

And so, when Alex Danvers told her to watch her back because there was a psychotic killer on the loose, she actually did listen. She took precautions: assigned extra guards to her office and her house, a separate team to keep an eye on her as she transited between those locations, rescheduled her meetings to be done in person on L-Corp premises or by video conference. She tightened her social schedule, bleak as it was. Set alerts on her computer for patterns in the veritable hoard of hate messages she received. Lena was careful.

It wasn’t enough.

She had been watching the headlines scrawl across the screen, telling her nothing that made sense:

_Man involved in Luthor attack memory restored! Blackmail suspected._

_Always one step ahead! Who’s Supergirl’s latest baddy?_

He’d gotten to her, or one of his genetically altered henchmen had, and holy shit was Lena going to have to up her security teams’ health insurance. _One_ of the guy’s super-ish humans had taken out eight of her people, and he’d still had enough intact limbs to race up twenty flights of stairs, cutting her and her personal guards off on the steps of the twenty-first floor.

“Why are you doing this?” Lena blurted, too stunned with fear to berate herself for asking possibly the most pointless question there was.

Especially useless, since the henchman didn’t appear to understand her. He brandished a gun bigger than her torso, cradling the butt against his right shoulder. A grin spread over his features, revealing teeth that were… glowing _green_? And that was all the warning she had before his finger pressed itself down on the trigger, the gun firing with a futuristic booming noise, and Lena saw herself hit, the cavern in her body hissing as whatever the fuck had hit it burnt through her organs.

Or, that’s what would have happened, if the woman she never wanted to see again hadn’t materialized out of basically thin air from the floor below, her cape a tsunami of red over Lena’s vision. The force of the blast knocked Supergirl forward, and she steadied herself on the railing before whirling around with all the fury of an avenging angel and pinning the gun-wielder against the concrete wall by the throat.

Whatever she was saying to him, growling an interrogation between clenched teeth, Lena couldn’t hear. Her ears were singing with the reverberation of a gun blast in a small space. She adjusted her jaw, trying to reduce the sensation. Gathered around her, she could see her personnel do the same.

It might have been ten seconds or ten minutes, but sometime within that range the DEO and police clambered into the fray, a swarm of black and blue to argue over jurisdiction with their prisoner. An officer climbed up the stairs to approach her, her face hard and kind.

It took her three tries to get Lena’s attention; her auditory input was pretty much just tinnitus. But when she finally made out the words, she was pleasantly surprised at the lack of accusation in them.

“Ma’am,” said the officer – Diamond, her badge said, “The paramedics are on their way for your men. Are you injured?”

Lena felt faint, but that was more because she hadn’t eaten more than the foam of her latte. She shook her head.

“I’m fine.”

Kara had released the man without changing her expression, letting pair of uniforms from some department cuff him and lead him away. Now that the action was over, Lena could pick out a head of auburn among the newcomers. She watched as Supergirl and Director Danvers spoke, obviously displeased with the other.

“-make sure she’s okay!” Kara was saying, as Lena’s ability to perceive sound returned.

“-fine!” Alex bit out, and okay, so her hearing wasn’t perfect yet, “-need … to … perimeter… could be more.”

Lena missed everything Supergirl tried to rebut next but considering it couldn’t have been more ridiculous than her apology had been, she doubted she was a loss.

Alex appeared to be winning this argument. She said something to Kara that made her sister’s glare darken, and then Supergirl was going up to Diamond, barking a short command that Lena only got the tail end of –

“-sure she eats.”

– And then she left, shooting down the stairs in the same blur she’d arrived in. Lena swayed on her feet.

* * *

They’d offered her a police _and_ a DEO escort to her apartment, but Lena had refused both, on the grounds that she was, physically, unharmed and still had a full day of business to conduct. She had cancelled the in-person meetings, the building was _crawling_ with law enforcement and repair crews, but she’d had to stay late to finish notifying the families of her security detail. Perhaps she should be grateful there weren’t more casualties, but when ten of her people were hospitalized in critical condition and there were three who, well, hadn’t made it into the ambulance, there wasn’t space for anything but pain. Maybe she should have phoned the families directly, but if she did that then she’d have to hear the voices of their grieving spouses, parents, children….

Lena was optimistically clinging to the ludicrous idea that she would somehow fall asleep tonight, if only an hour or so before she had to rise again. Four hours out of forty-eight wasn’t awful, was it? She could manage. She’d already finished making the calls to her lawyer and had just now taken a trip downstairs to the lab, confirming that nothing had been broken into or stolen. It was a long elevator ride up to her office.

She still had that statement to draft for the press tomorrow… Lena rubbed at her aching eyes, wishing she could snap her fingers and skip forward by a week, or a year. The elevator dinged and she stumbled out through its doors lost in her own head, frowning when she saw her secretary fidgeting by the office entrance.

“What is it now,” Lena asked, patience eroded into a brittle edge.

“Well, um,” the poor woman looked as though she’d kill to be anywhere but here, “You see, I know you and Supergirl are… acquaintances, but she-“

Lena didn’t have time for this. Brushing past the other woman, she strode into the room, half-expecting to see Kara Danvers at the window with her hands on her hips. The clench of her heart when she saw the room was empty was a mixture of relief and disappointment. Lena wouldn’t have minded an argument with her, if only to get the blood working in her brain properly again. She felt like she was going to drop dead.

Instead of the Kryptonian, there was a plain paper bag sitting on her desk and the wafting smell of sushi in the air. Gingerly, Lena approached, resting herself in her chair before peering into the bag with a strange weight in her chest. Lifting out the boxes of takeout, complete with napkins, chopsticks, and extra soy sauce, Lena became aware that she was not going to be presentable very shortly.

She snapped her head up to meet her secretary, who was idling nervously in the doorway. “You can go now,” Lena said, “Go home for the night.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, before practically fleeing from the room.

Lena surveyed the food in front of her. Her nerves faded somewhat when she saw it was all vegetarian; once she’d admitted to Kara that she could never stand the taste of fish after a stressful day, but Japanese was her favourite for such occasions – she’d _remembered_. The sticker on the bag told her it was from Lucky Cat, her hole-in-the-wall guilty pleasure. She’d never taken anyone there except Kara.

There was a sticky note there, too, damp from steam at the bottom of the bag. It had once had a longer sentence, but that had been scribbled out in dark pen. Only two words remained, and in their tiny, looping penmanship, they were furtive and scared.

_I’m sorry_

Lena had actually retrieved it from the bag, had held it between her fingers for a full minute before the tears took over and she hurled it into the trash bin as a crumpled mess.


	3. The shadow of such wisdom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from Paracelsus for the theme of 'sleep': "That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man..." The dude had a lot of thoughts about how to interpret dreams, none of which are relevant in this fic. I just liked the way the words sounded.

“Fine!” Lena spat, slamming her hands on her desk. She saw, in her periphery, Alex flinch. Scalding dark liquid erupted from the mug she’d been holding – miraculously unshattered – and splashed her hands. Her hiss of pain from the coffee fueled her next words, “Fucking _fine!_ ”

To her credit, Alex didn’t back away, but Lena could feel the tension the DEO agent was showering upon her like the heat of a midday sun, hot and unforgiving. She didn’t need to look into her eyes to sense the fear that was there, too, like all people looked at the Luthors. It had always been there, with Alex, now that Lena thought back on it. From the very first day they’d met; of _course_ she’d been cautious about her. Distrustful. Thinking Lena was going to show her true face one day like her brother and mother and hell, the wickedness in her family probably went back eons. No wonder Alex, along with the rest of the world, hadn’t trusted her.

That’s what made it so painful with Kar- with Supergirl. To meet someone so wholly and genuinely accepting of Lena, who trusted her without question or reason; Lena had never met anyone with Kara’s gift for optimism. Even in their arguments, Kara had believed in her. A real paragon of hope, she was.

Which only made it harder when that trust had eroded.

“I honestly don’t see why I am the only person your sister thinks can help with this,” Lena continued, sharpening her voice into venom, “I don’t know why you keep coming to me; I am not the only competent scientist in National City. But if that’s the way she wants to play this, then fine. I’ll help you. You’ll put in your report that despite my ‘professional disagreement’ with Supergirl and the DEO, I remain an active non-threat to national security at this time-“

Alex opened her mouth like she was about to protest, but Lena silenced her with a look.

“Oh, please,” she sneered, “Don’t deny it. You’re not the only one with spies.”

The director, for the briefest of moments, looked like she might have been chagrined, before she schooled her features into a hard expression, crossing her arms. The classic Alex Danvers defensive position, one that Lena was seeing directed at her with increasing regularity.

“Fine. That’s the way we’re playing it. You know, Kara wanted me to give you a chance. She still gets on my case about it. But you and I can both see that we’re beyond that point now. Fact is, you’re the only one with the scientific know-how who knows Supergirl’s identity _and_ isn’t otherwise occupied with trying to stop an intergalactic clusterfuck from escalating into a war. So, unless you’d like to magically become qualified to take _my_ job, Lena Lu _thor_ , I would really appreciate it if, in the interest of keeping Earth from becoming an alien battlefield, you could just play nice for once in your goddamn life and _fix my fucking sister!_ ”

That startled Lena out of her anger long enough to sputter: “Kara’s hurt?”

She winced at the sincerity of her concern in her tone. Alex didn’t deserve to hear that, to see her drop her composure. Lena trained her face, her heartbeat, into a normal pace again, but she knew she’d fucked up. She’d let whatever dredges of feelings she had for Kara colour her judgment.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the perspective, the situation must have been dire enough for Alex not to notice Lena’s slip-up. She answered the question as if it hadn’t been a betrayal of Lena’s most unconscious self, a seed of anxiety coating the cool tone she tried to convey.

“Not… it’s complicated. If you’ll come with me, I can show you.”

Lena uncrossed her legs where she sat at her desk. Against her better judgment, she followed Alex into one of those stupid black vans, offhandedly relaying the message to her secretary that she’d be out for the rest of the day and would she please reschedule all necessary appointments for tomorrow?

* * *

The impersonal interior of the DEO swallowed Lena whole, her Louboutin heels punctuating her presence through the empty hallways. She would like to say she was familiar at least with the path to the medical bay, but honestly, she would swear the directions changed every time she was there. Probably another one of their tactics to unsettle her, to prove that they’d never trust a Luthor.

She didn’t blame them; the feeling was mutual. She trusted them less than she could toss them with her pinky finger.

Finally, Alex led Lena to the glass-encased chamber where she could already see a distraught Kara lying prone on a hospital bed. The obligatory sun lamps were darkened to the lowest setting, suggesting Supergirl was almost recovered, but the sickly, pale pallor of her skin indicated otherwise. Sweat painted her face in a glittering sheen, and Lena could perceive the grease of her bangs where they were pasted to her forehead. Kara squinted her eyes as if the already dim light was painful to her, and she let out a small moan at the noise of their entrance.

It wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen. Lena frowned, spun where she stood, facing a lip-biting Alex. “What happened to her? You told me she was drugged. What kind of drug can do _this_?”

A fever. In a Kryptonian.

The director’s face looked far older than her 30-odd years as she answered. “Honestly? We have no idea.”

“Hm,” Lena said, putting all her effort into professionalism, “I can see why you needed me.”

Alex made a sound that wasn’t quite a scoff. “I wrote about everything I could find out in the log there. You have temporary access to all DEO medical files from that computer – _don’t_ even think about copying them. I’ve called Eliza already, so her, me, and Brainy are the only ones besides you who are authorized to access this room. Do not let anyone else in. If anyone tries, you _call me_.”

Lena raised a brow. This situation was ridiculous. “Under _stood_.”

The hardness in Alex’s eyes softened for an instant as her gaze drifted to her sister. “I have to go,” she said, “I wasn’t kidding about that war.”

And with that, she was left alone. In a medical lab. With a semi-conscious Supergirl.

Lena had been in worse situations.

* * *

After about three hours of pouring through Alex’s notes and her own preliminary toxicology report, Lena had a fairly solid idea of where to go next. It was clear that whatever Kara had been infected with, it had been specifically tailored to her physiology; that meant someone had been ruminating on their hatred long enough to concoct the drug, and also had to plan for how to get it into her system. Lena felt a flash of anger at whoever would have invented this. It had ruined a lot of people’s days.

Since Alex had left and conversation had been lacking, Kara had been silent, floating in some sphere of mostly unconsciousness. She still twitched and thrashed about, the crease between her brows a testament to her distress, but she hadn’t made a sound.

In a headache-induced break, Lena took the opportunity to stare at her unlikely patient. She rubbed the space between her eyes, as if that would reduce the strain on them from viewing screens and microscopes all day. She’d always known she’d need glasses earlier, had once playfully tried on Kara’s own pair. Lena had been shocked at how clear everything was with the lenses, nothing had looked different than usual; now she knew why. She’d asked how she looked in them to a giggling Kara.

“Perfect,” she had said seriously, sending electricity through her veins, “You look beautiful.”

What had Kara told work, she wondered now? Or rather, what had Alex told them? She could imagine it now, all the times she’d thought Kara was in bed with the flu, or had food poisoning, was away visiting family or chasing a beat. So many times, she realized with a pang, so many times she’d had to lie.

“I’m going to fix you,” Lena told the prone figure at her side, “I’m going to fix you and then we’re never going to speak of this again. Your sister will stop bothering me. You’ll make a new best friend, because that’s who you are, and I’ll never think about you.”

It was a lie. Not a very convincing one, even to an unconscious, drugged-up alien. It was the best Lena could do, given the circumstances. She turned back to her microscope with a sigh.

“Ngh,” groaned Kara from the bed, balling up her fists and twisting about, “Nnn… no!”

Great, Lena thought. _Now_ she decided to be vocal.

Kara let out a yelp, arm sweeping out in front of her like she was clumsily knocking at an opponent. On the monitor, her brainwaves were spiking in steep, erratic waves. Hallucinations? Really?

“Mm… tell the truth!” Kara shouted, “Lll. Lena.”

Her ears were electrified to the sound of her own name. Lena sat transfixed, cell structures forgotten in the prospect of self-interest.

“No,” Kara moaned, dragging out the word into several syllables, “Can’t… gotta tell Lena. Sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry, Lena. Don’t. My… fault! Sorry sorry sorry… stupid.”

Lena was distantly aware that she was staring, that her own eyes were blown wide and petrified against Kara’s scrunched up and roaming ones, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. She had never seen her ex-friend so vulnerable before and she couldn’t say she liked it. Liar or not, Kara didn’t deserve this. And it was a lot harder to hate someone when they weren’t coherent enough to fight back.

“Ah! No, please! Tell her… I’m sorry! Don’t hurt Le- I’m sorry!”

The faint whoosh of a door being opened brought Lena to attention once more, and she lifted her gaze to the entrance of the med-bay on high alert, bracing herself for a confrontation. But it was an older woman who entered, with kind, intelligent eyes and greying hair, who bore only the slightest resemblance to Alex Danvers to be called related. Lena had met her once before, she must have, to know without a doubt that this was Eliza Danvers.

Eliza barely spared a glance at Lena as she rushed to her daughter’s side.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” she said, petting Kara’s damp forehead and soothing the creases there, “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Lena choked back the emotion that threatened to gurgle past her throat. Eliza was Kara’s mother, but more than that, she was a _mom_ , who said all the things a mom should say to her children and _meant_ them. Who brushed back her child’s hair when she was sick and probably did thoughtful things like make them soup and bring them ginger beer in bed. Worst of all, whatever Eliza was doing was _working_ , evidenced in both her brainwaves and in how Kara’s cries were subduing to plaintive whimpers. It made Lena’s stomach flip.

She was busy trying not to watch, trying to give them privacy, as she flicked through the slides she had on Supergirl’s blood. She could swear she was on the verge of something, but this stupid drug was resisting her every analysis. It didn’t help that she was being inundated with the in-person reminders of everything she couldn’t have.

Lena was so focused on looking occupied that it took her a few seconds to realize Eliza had risen from her spot at Supergirl’s bedside and was fixating Lena with the most piercing expression she’d had the misfortune of experiencing. There was something to her gaze that, like Alex’s, was cool and calculating but simmering underneath with a restless ocean of emotion. It unsteadied her.

“What do you have so far?” Eliza asked, fully donning her persona as a medical professional. She strode over to the computer module and began scrolling through the notes Lena had added.

“Hm,” she intoned, not entirely displeased, “Do you want to fill me in on why you think it’s mineral-based instead of organic?”

Resigning herself to the idea that she apparently had a partner now, Lena angled the microscope towards the older woman and began to explain.


	4. Eavesdropping

Waking up felt like being punched in the face and gut by a boxer with elephant feet for hands. Which actually, she realized as the memories rushed back to her, wasn’t too far off from what had happened. Being sonically blasted out of the thirtieth floor was pretty much elephant boxing, right? Whatever had happened after, she’d obviously survived; Lena wasn’t making it to heaven, and as awful as she felt at the moment, she imagined hell to be far worse. So, now she’d established she was still technically alive, where did that leave her?

She breathed in deeply against the pain and the sharp tang of antiseptic assaulted her senses, cluing her in to her location: definitely a hospital. The sensation of tape on her left hand alerted her to the IV drip, and the compression around her torso was a hint at some rib damage. She couldn’t open her eyes, for some reason, couldn’t move either. Maybe this _was_ hell.

A newfound sensitivity to sound picked up the crescendo of voices just beyond what must be the hospital room. With a flash of alarm, anger crystallized in her, forming a numbing layer of icy rage over her physical hurts. She’d know that voice anywhere, even if she never heard it again in real life. It haunted both her nightmares and her dreams.

Kara wasn’t a quiet person by nature, especially when she didn’t know she had to be. Her conversation with Alex carried easily to Lena’s ears, since neither of them could apparently be bothered to realize their fucking patient was now conscious to hear them. She wasn’t in the hospital; it was the _fucking_ DEO.

“Abso _lute_ ly not!” Kara was saying. Screaming it, who’s kidding who?

Alex’s voice was much quieter, but barely calmer. “Kara, please. We agreed. She’s stable now. We can transfer her to a civilian hospital before she even wakes up. It’s what’s better for everyone.”

It was easy to take Kara’s fury for granted, when her passion was so often expressed in childlike exuberance and wonder. But as intensely as she expressed her joy when she won Monopoly (meaning everyone with less patience quit) or Lena ordered extra pot-stickers, Kara’s intensity was equally suited to anger. It imbued her words with such heat that rendered Supergirl’s heat vision redundant, inspiring twin feelings of righteousness in those privileged enough to hear her impassioned speeches.

Lena had loved to listen to her rant about anything, no matter how frivolous. Once she’d listened for a full half hour on the ridiculousness of some “mansplaining pig” from Catco who’d made the unfortunate decision of telling Kara she’d used a semicolon wrong.

But it was those serious things, those deep matters that Kara truly cared about, like the freedom of the press and human rights, that made her glow from the inside out, as if she’d swallowed a sun once and had harnessed its solar flares just to make a point about immigration, or how she hated how much Nia had to put up with. It was in these moments, with Kara aflame like a vengeant angel exacting holy justice, that Lena truly had come to love her. She could only admire as her best friend in the whole world remade the world apart in a verbal slaughter, and could only stare in awe as, despite seeing the dark side of everything, Kara always, every time, clung to hope.

It was this gift for hope that had Lena so confused, once she knew. Kara Danvers already had superpowers, why did she need literal ones? Lena would have torn down the planet and rebuilt to Kara’s wishes, if she could. It wasn’t fair that the passion she admired in this ordinary person was the public face of inspiration for countless others. Supergirl stood for all, supposedly, but Lena had wanted Kara to stand for herself, the people who _noticed_ her.

She didn’t feel awe this time, though. She felt angrier than Kara sounded.

“A civilian hospital? Oh, so she can get _killed_? I’m sorry, Alex, but after what happened with that _window_ there is no way I’m letting some police escorts in charge.”

“That’s literally their _job_ , Kara!” Alex was pleading.

“Not when it’s _her_! You’ve seen the news, they’re terrible! The public hates her!” The silky staccato had warped into a sticky emotionality, like there was something clinging to her throat. Was Kara… crying? Oh, that would be rich.

The DEO director’s voice was painfully cool. Lena could practically see her with her trademark pose, arms crossed, glare activated; the epitome of tough. She’d thought once that it had been a veneer, a uniform Alex could shed for her friends. Since last year, Lena was figuring out how false that might be.

When Kara spoke again there was no doubt of wetness in her words. “She nearly _died_ , Alex. I barely caught her. What if…” her voice cracked into a caricature of grief, “what _if_ I didn’t get there in time… what if….”

“Oh,” Alex exhaled, suddenly all softness. So apparently her cop attitude had its limits still, for her sister at least. There was a rustle of fabric that could have been the two embracing. “Shh… shh. Kara.”

Kara hiccupped roughly, her breathing noisy and ragged. _Oh_.

“I could have… I _can’t_ lose her. Alex, she would have died hating me and I wouldn’t have told her how I _felt_. I never would have been able to make it up to her. She… I _have_ to make it up to her.”

Alex was still making soothing noises, hushing and cooing. But she’d stopped arguing, for the moment.

“When you say how you ‘felt’…” Alex whispered.

Kara let out a weak chuckle. “I don’t think it’s… I think it’s just _her_.”

“You never told me.” Was Lena imagining the hurt there?

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Kara admitted.

“We’re really going to make Eliza go all PLFAG mom on us, huh?”

There was a loud sniff from a face that was trying to laugh, but Kara’s breath kept hitching and was soon dissolved into weeping. “I don’t care if she forgives me-“

A muffled snort from Alex must have meant she thought that was bullshit.

“I _don’t_ ,” Kara insisted, before conceding, “Well, I obviously _do_ care, but it’s okay if she doesn’t. I really hurt her, Alex. I really, really hurt her. And she kept telling me I would, hinting at it, but I didn’t listen, and I didn’t pay attention and I was the worst friend to her ever, _especially_ when I had to be Supergirl.”

“She brought part of that on herself,” Alex murmured, and Lena hadn’t expected that to hurt as much as it did, “she made some bad decisions, too, Kara. She hurt people, too.”

“How could she have known!” Kara protested, the anger returning, “We never told her anything, just expected her to agree with us without any of the pieces! She didn’t grow up like us, Alex, I’ve _met_ her family. They didn’t do anything to deserve her. She wasn’t surrounded by aliens like you were.”

“Kara…”

“Maybe,” Kara was saying, her energy fading, “I think if I’d told her. If she’d known from the _beginning_ , then maybe we could have talked more. Explained our points of view. It wasn’t fair for me to expect her to understand when I was only giving her half of the story.”

Alex exhaled, and Lena could hear all her sleepless nights echoed in that sigh. “You can’t change what happened, Kara. We all did what we thought was best, Lena included.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

There was silence, and then a shuffle of feet.

“Look,” said Alex, “I have to go check on what Brainy has for me. She’ll stay here for now, okay, but you and I both now there’ll be hell to pay if she wakes up in the DEO. We’ll revisit the issue later today.”

Kara made a toneless noise that didn’t sound happy. Lena listened to Alex’s footsteps clank dully against the concrete floor until she couldn’t hear them anymore. In the meantime, Kara had stepped closer, to what must have been the door of the DEO med-bay.

If years and years of close friendship and hanging on to every word hadn’t specifically attuned Lena to Kara’s voice, she doubted she could have made out what she said next.

“In case you hate me for this when you wake up,” she whispered softly, tenderly, “I’m sorry. For everything. I… I just wanted you to be safe.”

Lena held her breath until she was sure Kara had walked away.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, that was it. Lena was forcing herself back to sleep. Let her subconscious sort out what it meant for those words to imprint on her anger like embers in snow, searing their way into her heart. No way was she thinking about this ever again. No damn way.

By some divine mercy, being defenestrated, gravely injured, and figuratively stabbed through the chest with emotions wasn’t a bad combo for a sleeping pill. By the time she woke up next, she was in a _normal_ person hospital with her injuries all but healed, a team of ten undercover DEO agents crowding the hall outside her room. The injuries of her torso and head was gone, but the pain of Kara’s plaintive apology lingered on her brain like a burn.

She couldn’t keep going like this, being completely derailed every time Kara spoke to her like she was worth it. _Something_ was going to have to change.


	5. In the Line of Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't even @ me, I know this is like 3x the length of the other chapters. I'd split it, but I've committed to the 5+1 trope. Also, I didn't mean for this fic to have a plot, but it happened, it's out of my control, so don't blame me if it makes less sense than you'd like. We all watch the show, we should be used to plot decisions that give us whiplash.

Lena took a deep breath, allowing the influx of oxygen into her lungs to do absolutely nothing to calm her. The splash of fire that cascaded down her throat from the whiskey did something to her insides, but she couldn’t figure out if it was good or not. She couldn’t figure out a lot of things, these days.

Downing the glass, she felt the surge of alcohol consumed on an empty stomach take the finesse from her fingers, coating them in a strange airiness that would have been the death of many a test tube if she hadn’t already taken the night off from the lab. It was a pleasant sensation, the dull weightlessness of her limbs, and it was distracting her brain from focusing on other, less comforting matters.

Matters like Supergirl. Kara.

No. No way. Nope, nope, nope. Lena was not thinking about them – her – or what had been the point of this now half-empty bottle of Tomatin scotch she’d swiped from the mansion ages ago? God, she’d been so foolish, so stupid. How could she not have known? It was even worse, because Lena had always prided herself on her intelligence, despite how often Lex made her feel anything but, and she couldn’t even tell that her best friend and the famous superpowered alien cousin of her brother’s obsession were the same fucking person? The instant her confusion had settled into realization, it had all come crashing down; Lena’s trust, her faith in people, in her own intelligence, and oh, just every meaningful relationship she’d had in the past five years.

At first Lena hadn’t wanted to believe it. Or, she desperately had tried to believe that there were others in Kara’s life who had been kept in the dark just as much as she. But then she’d given it the barest modicum of thought and she’d realized that every single person knew. Except her. How could she not have known?

How could Kara not have _told_ her?

Lena did not have the energy to explore her feelings today. It was her first full day off in months, and she was not going to spend it ruminating over Kara. Since their sporadic and puzzling encounters lately – what had she meant by _feelings_? – Lena had been experiencing bursts of, well, not _forgiveness_ per se, but certainly something more tender than anger and sharper than sadness. It twisted in her gut and got worse when Supergirl was around, almost as though it wanted to reach for her, wrap itself around those strong and soft arms just like that time she’d carried Lena in her arms through the air…

Nope. Not doing this! Lena closed her eyes, as if blocking out the rest of the world would somehow manifest in forgetting. Good thing she did, too, because no sooner had she squeezed her lids shut than a vivid flash seared its way into her vision, painfully bright even with her eyes closed. All the alarms and sirens in the city seemed to have been activated at once, and Lena pinned her hands to her ears as she blinked rapidly, trying to shake the afterimage of the flash from her eyes. She jumped in her seat as the window behind her shattered, scattering the shards across the room. A few landed in the glass she was holding, one slicing a bead of red into her knuckle.

Too bad, Lena thought grimly, she had a feeling she was going to need that whiskey.

Then the person who’d so rudely broken in strutted around so Lena could see them, and she had to amend her previous thought. She was blue and red and blonde all over. Lena _definitely_ needed that whiskey.

Of course it had been Supergirl who’d careened into her office; really, she’d have to start billing the DEO every time one of theirs destroyed corporate property. The Kryptonian had knack for showing up at the most serendipitous of times, and this was no exception. Kara stood, her perfectly styled hair barely tousled from flight, and when she shook her head the curls swayed elegantly, sending pieces of window tinkling to the floor. Her mouth, red and sculpted by some cruel god, was set in a thin line to match the grave expression in her pale eyes. Lena would have expected thousands of things to come out of that mouth next, could imagine a million scenarios, but after all they’d gone through, she still wouldn’t have expected this.

“Do you know who I am?”

Lena choked on nothing. “Excuse me? You come in here, like _that_ , after being so desperate that I _not_ know, and you ask me if I know _who you are_?”

She could see Kara’s brain working, her face relaxing into puzzlement as she figured it out. “So you do know.”

“Superg- Kara, of course I know. I think I’ve made that abundantly clear to you.”

Kara blinked. “If you know who I am, then we have to go.”

She rushed forward to grab Lena’s arm with one hand, drawing her into an embrace, and then they were out the (former) window and hurtling through the air. Flying.

Lena sputtered. Of all the fucking _nerve_! “Kara, what the fuck! Let me go!”

“I’m sorry,” Supergirl said, “But I really can’t do that right now.”

Anger flared hot in her belly as Lena twisted against her captor. “Now is _not_ the time to play around, Kara! Tell me what’s going on! Don’t I deserve to know?”

Pressed against Supergirl’s chest, Lena could feel everything. She could feel Kara’s breathing as it halted momentarily, feel the thud of her racing heart as it stumbled over its next beat. And when Kara spoke against the rushing of the wind and the sirens below, she heard those words as clearly as if they were the only sound in existence.

“Of _course_ you do, Lena,” Kara told her, “You deserve everything. And I’ll explain as soon as we get somewhere safe.”

* * *

‘Somewhere safe’ turned out to be a field over a hundred miles from the city. It was as bland as bland could be, and nondescript, seeing as it was a field, but Supergirl had seemed very adamant that the middle of absolute nowhere was the only place to be. Lena wondered if she’d ever even been in this state before; her view for the past minute and a half had been exclusively farmland. God forbid she’d just been dragged into _Iowa_.

She wasn’t given a lot of time to readjust her legs to solid ground before Kara was speaking, those big blue eyes pleading something Lena couldn’t parse.

“I don’t understand it,” Kara told her, “One minute I was working with Alex, trying to figure out our move for capturing Vengeance, er, that scientist who’s been tracking you, and the next, there’s one of those guys with the freaky green mouths and he had a bomb – that’s the flash you probably saw – and it’s messed with everyone’s heads. It’s… probably temporary, but I don’t think it was supposed to work like that. They can’t remember who I am, or that I’m supposed to be one of the good guys… I didn’t know what to do, I just went straight to you.”

Lena blinked. Kara had come to _her_? Had trusted _her_ before anyone else? Thank god for the crisis or else her brain would have been jammed by that simple thought, that she was still someone to be valued despite what she’d put Kara through.

“Where is he, Vengeance, I mean?” What a stupid name.

“Somewhere in National City,” Kara said, “I don’t know. We didn’t… we were able to triangulate his position, but the bomb knocked out our systems before we could see the result.”

Seriously? Then what were they doing wasting time in butt-fuck maybe-Iowa?

“We need to get to my lab,” Lena said.

Kara frowned, alarm widening her eyes. “What? No! You can’t go back there, he’s after _you_!”

It was times like this that, although Lena knew Kara had gotten where she was in CatCo on merit, she had trouble believing Kryptonians had functioning brains like humans did. “Seems like he’s after more than just me, now,” she insisted, “And you can’t expect us to find him in this fucking field. Take me back to my lab, Kara.”

“I- I’m supposed to keep you safe,” Kara protested, “Keep him from hurting you.”

“ _You’ve_ already hurt me!” Lena screamed, the accumulated anguish from months of pent-up grief charging her voice with emotion, “And you’re going to let a lot more people get hurt if you don’t take me back _right now_ and let me help you catch him!”

That did it. She knew it would. Kara flinched back from Lena, physically recoiling, and her face twisted into a grotesque mask of pain, like one of the gothic gargoyles that adorned old churches. Lena felt Kara’s hurt as a stab in her chest, a twin reminder that she wasn’t so detached from the woman as she’d been pretending.

“Okay,” Kara said wetly, turning away from Lena’s gaze. Had she gone too far this time, even for her? There was a lack of fight to Kara’s voice that stung worse than any anger. “Okay, I’ll take you back.”

“Good,” Lena said, not believing it.

* * *

That had been an hour ago, or around that. It had taken Lena’s computers less than fifteen minutes – 14.07 on the dot – to find Vengeance. She’d done so in complete silence, with Kara pacing behind her, keeping her distance, but still distracting.

“Got him,” she said, with a hint of pride. If you couldn’t be proud of your accomplishments in life-or-death situations, when could you?

“You did? Of course you did.” Kara crowded around the screen.

“There. West 31st and Elm. There’s an abandoned factory there, just got bought out.”

“Thank you,” said Kara. “I need to go-“

“Wait!” Lena cried, leaping from her seat, “I didn’t mean any of that.”

Kara furrowed her brows but didn’t say anything.

“Before,” Lena clarified, “when I said it would be your fault if they got hurt. It wasn’t true. It’s _not_ your fault, you know that, right?”

She was only repeating what was practically cliché at this point. It was the same thing she’d told Sam after Reign; it was what Sam had told her. Hell, Kara had been saying it to her for their entire friendship, every time a new thing about Lex or Lillian had hit the news. It made them all stupid, for needing to hear it so often. But that didn’t make it any less true.

“Okay,” Kara nodded, suddenly looking concerned. Lena could tell the words hadn’t really sunk in. She’d pushed it too far; it was Kara’s turn to hate her.

Then Kara had turned away and the Kryptonian disappeared in an instant, sending a gust of wind to flutter Lena’s hair and skirt. The room suddenly felt colder, and Lena actually drew her arms around herself, shuddering. What should she do now, what _could_ she do? Kara was going to face off against someone who hated Lena so much that he was willing to launch a psychic and electromagnetic attack on an entire metropolis, and here she was, in the L-Corp basement, useless.

 _Ping_! The chirrup from her computer drew her attention away from Kara’s absence. Lena turned to the screen with a frown as she read the message.

The letters drained the blood from her face like her throat had been cut. Alex’s words from earlier echoed in her mind. “ _He targets people close to the Luthors, hoping to provoke a reaction. It’s like he’s toying with his food before he eats it_.”

But she’d… she hadn’t been seen out with Kara since their falling out! She’d only been with Supergirl, and her identity was secret–

The pieces were coming together now, coalescing into the ugly truth.

_“Do you know who I am?” “They can’t remember who I am…”_

_The psychic attack._ It hadn’t _erased_ their memories; it had _stolen_ them. Everyone whom Lena had interacted with recently, who of course were at the DEO; he’d been trying to find his next target, stealing their memories to find Lena’s heart. And everyone who knew about Supergirl’s real identity...

She stared at the words on the screen, hoping they’d have magically changed and that she was wrong about all of this. But as usual, she was disappointed.

_Aren’t you going to say goodbye?_

_Kara_. She had to get to Kara.

* * *

She hadn’t gotten there in time. Lena had gone into the lowest level of the basement, into the vault where she kept her most volatile experiments. There was a gun there that could rival the kind used by Vengeance’s henchmen. She carried that in her right hand. In her left, she held a bomb of sorts. If she had to, and she _would_ have to, she could use it to eliminate Vengeance.

She’d looked over the files the DEO had on him – honestly, they should just _share_ them and spare her the extra seconds it took to hack it – and she knew what she had to do.

That had been the plan, anyway. But a genetically and cybernetically enhanced alien versus Supergirl was an incendiary combo, and Vengeance had already caused several explosions in the neighbourhood to block incoming emergency vehicles. There was a swarm of people, civilians, running the opposite direction as Lena.

She’d be upping her driver’s pay considerably, for putting him through the shock of his life. He had gotten her there as close and as fast as he could, and she would have her lawyer contact him about those necessary traffic violations _if_ she got out of this. Right now, with flames erupting from buildings left and right, Lena wasn’t feeling the most optimistic.

Where the fuck was the DEO when you needed them?

“Lena,” boomed a voice, gleeful and sinister, when she rounded the corner of W 31st, “So glad you could join us!”

Vengeance didn’t look like anything she’d imagined, all pasty and stubbly and mostly harmless, just like every middle-aged suburban man she’d ever met, but he had weird gloves on and was lifting Supergirl by the neck and she was _bleeding_ , red dripping down her forehead like a stream, matching her lips and her cape.

“Lena,” she gasped, hoarsely, “ _No._ ”

“This is between us,” Lena told the man, raising the gun in position, “She’s not a part of this. We’re not even friends.”

Vengeance – god, what a stupid name – quirked his lips in response and let out a high-pitched laugh. “That’s not the impression _I_ got from, what was her name? Alex? She seemed to think you were _very_ good friends. Or… that Martian… now he had some insights.”

He shook his head, smile still pasted on his pathetic little face. Kara flailed and kicked in his grip, but she looked faintly green; Lena caught a glimpse of emerald embedded in Vengeance’s glove. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t really expect to be killing Supergirl out of this deal, but, you know, the universe can surprise you. Can’t say I’ll regret it, considering how she couldn’t even get rid of _you_. The worst of them! A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Any friend of a Luthor is an enemy of mine, as I say.”

“Lena…” Kara whispered, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! You’ve been through enough because of me! Go… please.”

Lena spared her a glare. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, not when you’ve come here with zero backup and zero plan.”

She turned again to Vengeance, pointing the gun right between his eyes. “We’ve fallen out, or haven’t you heard?”

He eyed her weapon with amusement, tossing his head back in laughter. “Silly Luthor, did you think that will work on me? She’s already been poisoned; you’re wasting your time. And you can say goodbye to your precious city, too, if there’s any damage to my armour. It’s rigged to blow. But no bullet can pierce my skin, no human gun can–“

Lena was sick of being patronized. She started running towards him, pulled the trigger in her right hand, and hurled the bomb as hard as she could with her left.

It happened very quickly. The force of the blast disoriented Vengeance, and he loosened his grip in surprise. Kara hit the floor in a climactic thud, already struggling to push herself upright. There was something very satisfying about the way she could see through the hole in Vengeance’s body, the human gun _obviously_ piercing more than just his skin. And then there was the bomb. It was an electromagnetic blast, built out of boredom more than anything else, but thank god for that. It was supposed to absorb the signals in Vengeance’s armour, stop the activation of the other bombs around the city. It would have been better if she’d gotten there sooner, so she could have taken better aim, but he’d already had Kara in his clutches when Lena had run in, and she couldn’t have risked him panicking.

It was supposed to stop _all_ the bombs in the city, but Lena hadn’t factored in Vengeance’s suit integrating sonic tech into its design. Very early-grade force-field stuff, and it reacted like a bitch when struck with enough force. She saw the sound distorting the air just before it hit her, and Lena halted in her tracks to shield her ears in the nick of time. The resulting shockwave shook the factory like an actual bomb, the earth quaking beneath her. Lena screamed as the blast tossed her backward, sending her sliding across the floor to slam _hard_ into a piece of machinery. The ceiling rumbled, and parts of it collapsed. Lena scrambled underneath the metal broiler she’d been knocked against as the world fell apart around her.

It lasted several seconds.

Blood was thick and pounding in her ears, a ringing that drowned out everything thing else. Her landscape was a miasma of muffled sirens and distant shouting, her vision spotted and tunnelling. She was underwater in a dusty, debris-ridden air, her body heavy and yet weightless, wading her way through the wreckage as if she were caught in the strongest of undertows. Her dust-clouded eyes scanned the scene before her, searching and dissatisfied. Her mouth was bleeding.

_Where was she where was she where was she._

Lena crawled out from under the machine and pulled herself upright. Psychological shock had been pretty effective at keeping the panic at bay until now, but it couldn’t keep pace with the rapidly accelerating fear that was coursing through her body. It had been a façade of normalcy, and she shed it like a molted skin as her panic propelled her on the shortest path to the factory. Heat pooled in her ears where it fled from her core, her limbs powered by the rush of blood to arteries and veins. She’d never been more grateful she’d chosen flats that morning.

Adrenaline was one hell of a drug. Right this instant her adrenal glands were a production line for war supplies, churning out enough epinephrine to fuel an army of soldiers, or one very determined Lena Luthor. She glanced around, forcing the panic to stay under the surface where it belonged.

 _There_. Lena’s eyes narrowed in on a divot in the rubble, where a slender, navy and red-clad body lay slumped, motionless. Lena was at her side in an instant, her newfound strength helping her overturn the clumps of building that had fallen on her friend.

_Please don’t be dead please don’t be dead._

She called out Kara’s name, shaking her by the shoulders. The woman awoke with a cough – oh thank god – but her eyes flitted shut again. Her veins, normally invisible, stood out raised and vibrantly green.

 _Poison_ , Lena remembered with a pang.

“Kara! Stay awake for me, dammit!” Lena commanded her, oblivious to the influx of sirens and shouting behind her, the scarlet laser sights of SWAT teams, and a certain DEO Director currently elbowing her way past the special forces.

“Lena?” Kara coughed again. There were red, finger-shaped splotches where Vengeance had tried to strangle her. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving your dumb ass, apparently,” Lena hiccupped, tears threatening to overflow, “Figures you wouldn’t remember. You save all the glory for yourself.”

The blonde frowned, looking genuinely distressed. “That’s not true. I’m sorry if that’s true. I wouldn’t do that to you. You’re too… oh, this really hurts.”

“Shh,” Lena murmured, and that was it, she was crying now, her face would be blotchy and disgusting while she gave her statement to the police and – _fuck_ – the press. “Don’t talk, help’s on its way. I’m here.”

Kara’s ensuing cough dribbled blood onto her chin. Lena wiped it away with her thumb. “Lena–“

“I said don’t talk.”

“No, gotta tell you. Please. I’m _sorry_ , Lena. For everything. For more than you know.”

Lena shook her head wildly. Why did this sound like a goodbye? This wasn’t a goodbye, it couldn’t be.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she soothed, petting Kara’s hair with one hand as she cradled her head in the other.

“Nn… ‘s’not okay. Should’a… shoulda told you….”

Kara’s eyes rolled back as she closed them, body succumbing to a seizing fit so violent that Lena flinched back. The next moment, Alex Danvers was there and was barking orders and holding her sister as a team of agents strapped her to a gurney.

“I’m so sorry I forgot you,” Alex was saying, “I’m so sorry.”

They took her away to the DEO hospital and Lena just knelt there in the dust, unable to stop sobbing.


	6. Reciprocation

The thing about Kryptonians, or at least Kryptonians on Earth, was that they tended to bounce back fast, more often than not. And, thankfully, that was the case this time with Kara. Despite the severity of her injuries and how close the fucking Kryptonite poison had brought her to death, she’d been released from the hospital within forty-eight hours, on the condition that she didn’t go anywhere near a crime scene for a week. Lena had checked up, discreetly, of course, by monitoring the DEO medical logs. She’d learned that Kara’s cover for work was more or less the truth: she’d been in the area when the bombs went off.

The DEO had taken the remainders of Vengeance’s weapons into custody – for ‘safe-keeping’ they claimed, but obviously they were going to replicate them. It still grated how hypocritical they were.

The chaos of the past week had wreaked havoc on Lena’s time, and she was really going on her third day with no sleep, and only caffeine and whiskey – for fuck’s sake, she’d _earned_ it – to fuel her. The press was going apeshit over the thrilling conclusion to almost half a year’s worth of attacks and criminal activity, and they were as much willing to blame her as they were to exonerate her.

“Bullshit,” Sam had told her, steel in her eyes, “You don’t need to be looking at that. They don’t know you.”

Sam had invited Lena over to her house the other day and didn’t mind that she’d barely eaten anything and made poor conversation.

“It’s trauma,” she shrugged at the CEO, “I know, not your therapist, but.”

What surprised Lena most was Ruby. She’d grown so much since she’d last seen her, which, granted, had been a year or so ago, but she’d launched herself at Lena before she’d even set foot in the door, flinging her arms around her and only letting go when Sam had mentioned how impolite it was not to offer to take a guest’s coat.

“Sorry,” Ruby had said sheepishly, “I got excited.”

Lena offered her a rare, real smile. “I don’t mind.”

It was the most relaxed she’d felt in months. She should have been content with that, with Ruby’s earnest sweetness and Sam’s brusque, but kind, generosity; yet some part of her knew there was someone missing that even two people couldn’t replace.

She needed Kara.

And so it was that, nearly ten days after Supergirl had been allowed into the public again, Lena found herself distraught, torn between two alternatives. On one hand, she missed Kara. She wanted to go to her and apologize and ask to be let into her ridiculously nice-for-a-journalist-in- _this_ -market apartment and beg Kara for forgiveness until she relented and pulled her into her arms. There’d be kissing, obviously, because this was a fantasy scenario, and anything else Kara wanted. Lena would do _anything_ she wanted.

And… on the other, she didn’t know. Lena still hurt. She’d never offered anyone a second chance before, never _wanted_ to. The fear of being betrayed again coiled like a snake in her chest, constricting her lungs and heart until she couldn’t breathe or think straight. She didn’t even know what would happen if they became friends again. What if they disagreed over work like they had in the past? Or if Kara started keeping secrets again? There were so many variables, too many of them outside Lena’s control.

Sam had talked about that, hadn’t she? Their drunken conversation was a faint imprint on the fringes of her memory. Something about loving someone being having your heart outside your body? Yes, that was it. It really was true.

She should just focus on her work, on writing another damned press statement about Vengeance. It’s why she was here, in her office, instead of recuperating at home. The television in the background was still spewing ‘news’, or whatever vitriol they could pass off as it. Most of it was slander directed at her, Lena wasn’t watching it to be a masochist; if she was going to get on top of this thing, she had to know what people were saying.

But then a familiar face appeared on screen, blonde and blue-eyed and looking valiant in uniform. Lena would be mortified to admit she literally _scrambled_ for the remote, thumbing the volume up to where she could hear it.

“-no, I would not say that is accurate at all,” Kara was saying to a fluffy CBN microphone, “In fact, it was due to Lena Luthor that we were able to locate Vengeance at all, let alone defeat him.”

“But wouldn’t you say it–”

“Look,” said Kara, “I get it. Lex Luthor has caused serious damage to the world, and that kind of evil is hard to forget. But I won’t tolerate anyone denigrating Lena’s name; that has to stop _now_. She has done so much good for this city and for the world, and she has it all while people blame her for the actions of others. Lena Luthor is a good person. She’s smart and courageous and she won’t admit it, but she has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. There was no one I trusted more to help take down Vengeance than her, and she didn’t let me down. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Lena who deserves the credit for that, not me. Lena Luthor _saved_ this city.”

Oh. _Oh_. Lena raised a hand to her cheeks; they were wet. She felt feverish and trembly and she couldn’t pay attention to anything the reporter was saying. She just… felt like her heart was living outside her chest.

Fuck it. Kara had almost _died_ last week, was there anything she could do to Lena that would hurt more than that?

Newly resolved, Lena wiped her eyes with a tissue, rising from her desk.

“Cancel all my appointments,” she told her secretary, “I won’t be in again tonight.”

She didn’t stop to look behind at the woman’s expression. She could picture the incredulity perfectly.

“Where to, ma’am?” asked her driver, a different one from last time – she’d given poor Adam an early vacation.

“East 49th and Blaire,” Lena told him, “that Chinese place with the red and gold façade.”

The driver gave a curt nod and they were pulling away from the curb.

* * *

Thinking about doing something and actually doing something was a very different beast, Lena realized, when she was standing in front of Kara’s apartment with a tote bag of takeout and her other hand clenched into a fist, hovering above the door as if there was something repelling it.

Stupid idea, she told herself. Stupid, stupid. She’d had a plan, had a script ready, and all sorts of contingencies in place for if it didn’t go well. She’d prepared as much as she could, Lena thought. But none of that helped her in the moment.

The memory of Kara, bleeding and wilted on the factory floor, swam unbidden to the forefront of her mind. It hurt to think about, but it emboldened her, reminded her of the stakes. They both led dangerous lives; odds weren’t in their favour.

But fuck it. Lena forced her hand against the door, and once that initial contact had been made, she found it easier to do repeat it. She knocked once, twice…

“Kara?” she called, which was much harder to do than the knocking, “It’s Lena. You don’t have to let me in, I just–”

The door swung open, revealing a messy-bunned Kara in fleece pyjama pants and a hoodie. It was strange to see her in normal clothes, without her glasses.

“I knew it was you,” she breathed, barely making a sound. She stepped back to let Lena through, gesturing to the couch.

Just like that, Lena knew she was fucked. The sight of Kara looking so human after months of only seeing her as Supergirl, all made up and uniformed, the sound of her voice quiet but steady, it was enough to undo her. The ground tilted under her feet and she collapsed onto the sofa out of necessity, still gripping the bag of Chinese food.

“Would you like something to drink?” Kara asked, too casual. Lena couldn’t form an answer, her throat was jammed, but Kara was already setting two glasses on the counter and filling them with what was definitely strong liquor.

She brought one of the glasses over to Lena before settling herself on a cushion across from her, the coffee table barricading them from becoming too close. “So,” she began.

Lena couldn’t stop herself.

“Kara, I’m sorry!” she blurted, the words tumbling out in a rush, “I am so, incredibly sorry. I… I was selfish and irrational and was too wrapped up in my own hurt to think for a second about what you were going through. I was so _angry_ with you and I wish I could tell you that I’m not still, but I’m _working_ on it, Kara, I swear to you. And I understand better now. I know it wasn’t your fault. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me and I’m so sorry that I wouldn’t _listen_ when you tried to explain. I… I was dealing with more than losing just a friend, and I let my feelings get in the way of our friendship. I just…”

Lena had probably cried more in the past few months than she had her whole adult life, so what was once more to add to the tally? She let the tears fall, tried not to let them clog her voice. The rest she said through sobs.

“I never wanted to lose you, Kara. You’re the most important person in my life, and I never even told you. And then, with Ven… I couldn’t live in a world without you, Kara. It’s selfish, I admit that. I guess we’re all selfish when it comes to love. But I couldn’t have lived with myself if you’d...” her voice cracked, “if you’d _died_ and I never told you how I felt. What if… you thought I hated you.”

“Lena…”

“I’ve said _awful_ things, Kara. You didn’t deserve any of them and I didn’t mean them. That’s why I came here, to apologize. I brought your favourite, extra pot-stickers. You can tell me to leave, it’s okay. Whatever you need. I- mmph!”

Lips, Kara’s lips, crashing into hers with no finesse, no warning. _Superspeed._ Somehow the Kryptonian had leapt across the table dividing them and was now firmly pressing her mouth against Lena’s, fitting them together like the last two pieces of a puzzle that had been frustratingly incomplete. Once that initial shock faded, and it faded pretty quickly, Lena relaxed into the kiss, dragging closer by tugging on her lower lip. The odd angle threw them off balance and they tore apart with a crash as Kara fell in between the coffee table and the couch.

“Oh god,” Lena whispered, panic rising, “Oh god, oh god, I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t used to freaking out, wasn’t used to kissing her _best friend_ turned ex-best friend turned _something_ , either. Her heart struggled against its bodily cage and she sucked in oxygen in shallow, too-quick breaths. What had she done? She wanted to kiss Kara again. She should leave and never come back. She should-

“Lena.”

There was a command in the way Kara said her name. Lena flickered her eyes to meet her stare, terrified of what she’d find there.

Kara reached a hand up to rest it on Lena’s own trembling one. The pressure was pleasant and overwhelming all at once.

“Of _course_ I want you to stay.”

What. Lena opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Across from her, Kara was smiling, concern and empathy welling in her eyes. They were shimmery again, from tears, like the ocean on a sunny day.

“You told me you loved me,” Kara stated, as if it were as simple as commenting on the weather.

What. “I… did?” Lena let out a sound she’d intended to be a chuckle, but it came out mangled and insecure, “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Kara’s tentative smile recoiled into a frown, “No! Lena, that’s not, it’s not what I meant! I never… I meant. _I_ kissed _you._ ”

Kara blushed. Lena’s forgotten what it was to see that, to be the one bringing that flush of colour into her cheeks and ears.

“I never told you how I felt,” Kara continued, dipping her gaze, “At first I didn’t think you’d feel the same, of course. And then because it was all so new for Alex, I didn’t want to take away from that. I didn’t want to ruin things. And I don’t want to ruin our friendship now, er, I don’t want to presume!”

“Kara,” Lena said, “We can be friends. We _are_ friends. We can be… more than friends, if you want.”

“Are you sure?”

Lena’s heart nearly cracked in half. Kara should never have been afraid to ask that question, as if she was scared that she would wake up and it would all be a dream. It was Lena’s fault, she knew, that uncertainty. She’d spend a lifetime making up for that, if that’s what it took. And she realized she _wanted_ to.

Lena squeezed her hands, thumbing circles she hoped were soothing. She gave a small smile, hoping to coax one from Kara as well.

“I’ve never been more sure in my life,” she told her honestly.

“Oh.”

Oh no. “Only if that’s what _you_ want,” Lena backtracked, frantic, “Obviously, I don’t want to be in any kind of relationship if you’re unwilling. I’ll be there for you however you want me to be. I won’t leave again.”

Kara nodded, her confidence replenishing slowly. “I want to be friends again,” she admitted, “I… I _really_ missed you, Lena.”

Lena blinked away the new wave of tears Kara had triggered. “I missed you, too. And I’m _sorry_.”

“Can I,” Kara stammered, “Can I hug you?”

“Of _course_.”

Lena pulled her from the floor until she was practically sitting on her lap, letting her arms swallow Kara into her embrace.

“I should have told you sooner,” Kara whimpered, but Lena only tightened her hold on her.

“I should have listened.”

When they drew apart, they were both splotchy faced with damp spots on their shoulders.

“Um,” Kara bit back a giggle, “I guess we have a lot to talk about, now.”

Lena snorted, “I suppose communication _is_ key.”

They were laughing about it, but they both knew how serious this was. It would take a while for things to be put back where they were. Hopefully they’d grow even stronger from it.

For the first time, Kara acknowledged the bag of takeout that sat abandoned next to the sofa. “Is that-“

“Your favourite, of course,” Lena assured her, “I figured you’d be hungry after talking to reporters all day.”

Kara fixed her with a knowing look. “You _saw_.”

“I did,” Lena confirmed, “I’m sorry it took me so long to come around.”

“Stop that,” Kara scolded, heading to the kitchen to grab plates and cutlery, “If we both go on apologizing every other sentence we’ll never get anywhere. I want to eat.”

“And I want to kiss you again.”

She hadn’t meant to say it. It had just slipped out. Lena stilled, leaving herself at the mercy of Kara’s response.

For a moment, Kara’s response was nothing. Her round eyes went as wide as the plates she was holding, and a crimson wave spread upwards across her face. Then, surprise morphed into something else entirely and soon she was ducking her head and laughing in that awkward way she did, her expression filled with a different kind of heat.

“Well in that case,” she said, plopping herself next to Lena, and the coquettish bedroom eyes thing shouldn’t be working with her face still red from crying and embarrassment, but it _really_ was working on Lena. “I guess we’ll have to eat this fast, then.”

It was the worst line she’d ever heard, sending both of them into guffaws, but it came from Kara and that also made it the best line she’d ever heard.

“I look forward to it,” Lena told her. Kara beamed at her with her cheeks stuffed with jiaozi and that was when Lena realized.

 _This_ was what she felt was missing when she hung out with Sam. _This_ was what she’d never felt the entire time growing up with her family. This was _love_ , and Lena wasn’t going to give it up for anything.

**Fin.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who's read, commented, and/or left kudos. It makes my whole day. 
> 
> I also want to mention that I'll likely go through this fic sometime soon just to make a few edits (99% of which will be making this hastily scraped together plot actually make sense rip). I haven't actually even read over this story yet? Looking at my work before I post it would be asking way too much of me.


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